Joseph Lorton and his wife Emma in about 1871.
Joseph Lorton, Born 1851
VICTORIAN POLICE CONSTABLE
Joseph Lorton’s father was an agricultural labourer in Bedfordshire; his mother was a lace maker. At the time of the 1861 Census ten year old Joseph was registered as an agricultural worker. In the 1871 Census his father was registered as a ‘farmer of 30 acres’, and Joseph was registered as an agricultural labourer. He married in 1871 and joined the Bedfordshire Police Force as a police constable in 1874. He was promoted to Merit Class in 1880. That award followed an incident in 1880. While engaged in preventing a breach of the peace he was attacked by three men ‘who both kicked and beat him most unmercifully with sticks’. PC Lorton ‘defended himself with great courage until quite disabled and rendered unfit for duty for many weeks’. He remained a rural police constable until his retirement in 1901 at the age of 49.
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